To Have Loved [BxB] Book I ✓

Chapter 15

a/n: Alright, so I am here to bring you the fifteenth chapter. It's the first one that's from Theo's perspective, so I hope you like it. Anyways, I'm going to sleep now, so see you guys in the morning, and I hope you like it. Also, if you're in the mood, listen to the song, Noah Kahan is a beautiful man with the most beautiful of voices.

It was a quiet Friday evening after classes had ended, the first Friday of November actually. Theo was sitting at his desk with a stack of books in front of him. One might have thought he was reading them, but in actuality, he was checking on a few of his pressed flowers to see how they were doing. He knew he could probably come up with a way to make some kind of cranked press to speed the whole process up, but he liked pressing them with books. His mother had given him her huge hardback Longfellow books that he didn't have much intention of reading, so he used them for flowers and leaves.

"Yeah, mom, it's fine, I'm remembering it. No, I've been doing everything I'm supposed t- He's not my dad, stop calling him that-" Kayden said, sounding increasingly irritated as he paced around their room with his phone to his ear. He stepped outside and closed the door. Theo wondered about Kayden's relationship with his mom, but he didn't ask; it seemed too personal.

Theo was never quite sure where he stood with the redhead, not that he thought Kayden disliked him, it was just that sometimes they talked all the time, and sometimes Kayden would go days barely speaking a word to him, He didn't mind much though. Theo was generally a quiet person, he also didn't require much attention from his friends, and Kayden listened to him when he asked him to, so if they didn't talk much for a day or two, he was okay with that.

He set one book back on the stack next to his desk and took another one up, setting it down on the center and carefully opening it, looking over the set of leaves that were now flattened and dried out. He'd done a lot of research into the proper way to press and preserve plants, it was really kind of beautiful. He'd pick out a book, set the flowers or leaves in groups of three with enough space between them to make sure none of them got damaged, and then he'd set them in the book with three sheets of paper on each side, close it, set it on the stack, and wait. Every week he'd check on them to see how they were doing.

Now, with a few finished ones laid out on his desk, he pulled out one of his leather journals, pen, and tape. He had hundreds of flowers that he'd pressed and collected. It didn't matter so much to him to collect them all, he just liked doing the activity. With slow and measured movements, he picked up one pink chrysanthemum and gently placed it down, placing little strips of paper at the edges to hold it down without risking damage from the tape. He taped the paper down and uncapped his pen.

Pink Chrysanthemum
Order: Asterales
Family: Asteraceae
Fall Flower

Theo smiled. Not many things in his life could be as consistent and predictable as this. His therapist had once asked him if he'd ever been afraid of the dirt and germs that might come with his plant-related hobbies, but strangely enough, he wasn't. The hand-washing and showering and counting weren't really related to dirt or germs for him. Sure, he didn't like touching gross things, he didn't like shaking hands often, or swimming in ponds, and he didn't like eating meat for fear that it would be contaminated, but none of those got to him as much as the fear of being a bad person. He couldn't steal, he couldn't cheat, and he was awful at lying. The things that everyone saw: the counting, the cleaning, they were things that he did to make up for his wrongs or to prevent them before they happened.

In a sense, it was for good luck, but a part of him worried that if he didn't go through his routine, if he forgot to water his plants on time, or left one too many pencils in his pencil cup of which must at all times contain no more or less than 9 when he wasn't using it, if he forgot to check that the door was locked, if his bed was unmade, if there was dust on the window sill, if the curtains were left open, if his teeth weren't brushed, something would go horribly wrong and the scariest thing was that he didn't know what. He had no idea what would happen, he just knew that something would. When he worried, he counted. He went through the multiples of 3 up to 300, his multiples of 9 up to 693, his multiples of 13 up to 1300, and by that point, he was usually calmed.